Each foundation
repair company has its claim to fame. They make boasts about how
great their foundation piers designs are for your home's foundation.
The nature of this is simple. Every pier design has its uses and
points that it works better than others, but under most conditions,
all of the different types of piers are going to perform about the
same for lifting and leveling a home slab or beam.

For the most part, it is all a gimmick to catch your attention
and impress upon you a feeling of security. A prime example of this
is the cable reinforced pier system. Buried cable is going to rust
away rapidly in the soil. This particular pier design can have other
problems as a result of the cable, but we are not going to discuss
them in this article.

Foundation Repair Companies

Most foundation repair companies and sales persons are practicing
a live performance magic show. What I mean by this is that their
presentation is mostly for show. They use elaborate pier designs and
tools to make you believe that you need their services and piers,
and that their pier is the only way that you can get it done right.
While, most of us are smart enough to understand that there are
other foundation repair companies with different styles of piers,
and that other piers will perform the same function, it can be
difficult to determine the truth about the need for piers.

Foundation Repair Dallas

Foundation Repair Inspections in
Dallas

Almost all foundation
repair companies and
engineers or inspectors
use technology for their measurements, and base their results on
this technology. This can be misleading for all parties involved
because technology is only as useful as the person operating it.
Unfortunately, people assume that this technology is always correct
and don't consider their common sense.

The particular piece of technology that I am referring to is a
computerized level or compu-level. I'm sure that you have seen them
if you are looking to have your foundation checked. These levels are
very useful for determining elevations and where level would be, but
are not useful in determining movement of a house foundation. In all
of the years that I have been in the construction industry, I have
never seen a foundation of any form that was completely level, and
therefore, from its original position, there would be grade changes
if measured using a compu-level, when in fact, no movement has
occurred.

How to determine movement in house foundations.

There are better more accurate ways to determine movement in a
slab foundation or house foundation. These methods don't use
technology, but are scientific, though they may not appear to be as
impressive as fancy equipment. To determine the amount of movement
if any in a foundation, you must understand the original
construction of the home.

When building a house, the foundation is
going to have higher and lower points. This may be the result of
poor planning, accidental movement of a foundation form board,
misplacement of the form, or highs and lows in the center of the
foundation. The concrete being liquid and setting up rapidly and
over large areas make it difficult to get it perfect. This is where
the acceptable variances come from. For this purpose, it is left to
the framers and the brick masons to make things more straight and
level. The framers generally level the top plate or the elevation
where the ceiling will generally come across the home. This is
useful for your internal measurements, although it is not always
accurate due to the carelessness that occurs when trying to rush
through these projects.

For the outside or perimeter elevations, the
most effective way to measure movement is to consider the
bricklayers. Brick masons
measure and story off the courses of brick from the top down, and
place any cuts at the bottom to level out the bottom course. Then
they lay each course up using a string line to increase speed and
keep straight lines and prevent the line of the brick from curving
up or down and in or out. Therefore, using a string line on the
brick coursing should show any movement that has occurred, and how
much movement took place. The line may not be level, but it will
never lie.

A compulevel can be useful as a second set of eyes though. It can
be used to determine if results are correct, but only if it is used
to take readings from the top plate. Most of these factors are
visually evident if the inspector knows what to look for and where
to be looking.

Affordable Foundation Repair Dallas

When you are looking to get
foundation
repair on your home, there are many issues that you should be
aware of about the foundation repair
industry. So, before we attempt to get you signed up for an
estimate, we want to take a minute to make you aware of some of the
industry practices the we feel are less than honest, and explain
why. We do this because you deserve to make a well informed decision
which starts with a basic understanding of foundation repair and industry practices.

Based on the
Foundation Repair
Association's own website, about 90% of all foundation piers sold
are not necessary. This is a very bold statement. Now this statement
makes me a bit nervous about the industry as a whole when I consider
that the top representatives of this organization are the owners of
many major foundation repair companies.
Make of that information what you will, but you can verify it for
yourself on their website.

When you request an estimate for
foundation repair, you are going to be visited by a sales
person, not an owner or an
engineer. This
sales person is generally paid solely on his commissions of how much
he has sold. Therefore, it is in his best interest to sell you as
many piers as he thinks he can get away with, or send you away if he
thinks that you can't afford the service.

Now, I will explain how these
foundation
repair salesmen are able to sell so many unnecessary piers.

If you have already had an estimate, or an engineer's inspection, then you are probably
already familiar with the computerized level or compu-level for
short. They bring in this tool and start taking measurements on your
floors (most engineers will measure at the top-plate as much
as possible). Then they sit down with you and show or tell you what
their readings were from the level. This can be off by several
inches throughout your house, and works great as a scare tactic
selling point of foundation repair.

Don't be fooled by this slide of hand magic show. It is solely
intended to make the person look important and give them numbers
that you can see to scare you with. Taking these readings makes it
look like they are doing something and are getting reliable results.

This is not the truth. Technology is great, but limited to its
proper use. Before you could rely on the readings of the compu-level
to tell you how much your home has moved, you would first have to
know where each exact point of measure was when the home was first
built, and you would need a reliable bench mark from where the
original readings were taken.

All of these factors just are not possible. A bench mark would
have moved independently from the home, and there are not original
readings to compare the new readings to. This makes it impossible to
use a compu-level to determine the amount of movement in a home's
foundation, or where movement has occurred, if any at all. The
technology is limited to the parameters of its design and
programming. This is to say that a compu-level is not capable of
adding and subtracting. The program just wasn't designed for the use
of determining movement.

How much foundation movement has occurred?

Foundation Settling Cracks

There are, however, ways of determining movement, where it has
occurred, and how much it has moved. These answers about your
foundation movement or settling can only be answered in an
understanding of the home's original construction, and a brief
amount of mechanics and physics.

By studying the bowing, cracking, and other
signs of movement,
you can determine the direction of settling or heaving of the home.
For instance, when looking at a crack in a wall, it will either open
(get wider) toward the top or the bottom of the wall. A crack that
gets wider to the top, is likely to have heaving under that specific
area or one or both sides have settled. A crack that gets wider to
the bottom, is going to be just the opposite, but is most likely to
be settling directly at that point. There are ways to determine
which is the case. It requires more information from other parts of
the house, plumbing locations, trees, and the outside readings.

One of the best tools for checking movement around the perimeter
of a brick home is a string-line and set of line-blocks. Now this
may sound silly, but it goes back to the original construction of
the home.

I have never in all my years in the construction industry (about
30) nor have I ever heard of a home being built completely level or
square. These imperfections in the foundation are left to the
framers and brick masons to hide or make un noticeable. This is
exactly why you cannot completely level a house and expect the
foundation repairs to be correct.

In the attempt by the framers and the bricklayers to hide the
imperfections, the framers generally level the top-plate of the wall
so that the ceilings are level, and the bricklayers story their
brick coursing from the top down so that any cuts are at the bottom
of the wall and not in front of your eye level. When they lay these
courses of brick, they use a string-line not a level to keep their
lines straight, and as level as the top of the wall.

These are honest methods of determining
movement in the foundation of your house. Don't settle for the
magic show. They will almost always sell you foundation piers that
you don't need, or place them in the wrong spot. Affordable
foundation repair starts by providing honest
estimates and only
selling you the foundation piers that your house needs.